Fourth stake increase raises holdings to 20%, Ping An Life’s 15 billion yuan incremental investment and the dividend calculations behind it

On January 7th, Ping An Life released an announcement stating that as of December 30th, 2025, its holdings of Agricultural Bank of China H shares through Ping An Asset Management had exceeded the 20% threshold, reaching a book balance of 32.428 billion yuan.

Looking back at this trajectory, from less than 5% of the H shares’ outstanding share capital to the current 20%, Ping An increased its holdings in Agricultural Bank H shares four times over the past year to achieve this.

This is not an isolated case, but rather a typical example of the wave of insurance capital stake-building since 2025: last year, insurance capital announced stakes 39 times—a new record for the past decade.

In this round of buying frenzy, more than 80% of targets were H shares, with high-dividend sectors such as banks, energy, and utilities being the absolute favorites.

Apart from Agricultural Bank, Ping An’s multiple moves in China Merchants Bank and Postal Savings Bank, along with Hongkang Life’s stake in Zhengzhou Bank, together shed light on the logic behind current insurance asset allocation: under a prolonged low interest rate cycle, bank stocks with stable dividends are viewed as a substitute for “quasi-fixed income” assets.

The preference for dividend assets is driven by both sides of the insurance companies’ balance sheets.

On the liability side, the rise in the proportion of dividend insurance forces insurers to seek more stable cash flows to meet payout needs; on the asset side, the continued decline in long-term bond yields has intensified the “asset shortage,” and bank stocks with 4%-5% dividend yields have become a highly cost-effective safe haven.

A deeper consideration is the adaptation to accounting standards—by including these assets as FVOCI (financial assets measured at fair value with changes included in other comprehensive income), insurers can effectively hedge against the impact of secondary market volatility on profit statements, achieving smoother performance.

Ping An Co-CEO Guo Xiaotao once summarized the investment principles as the “three can’s”: reliable operations, promising growth, and sustainable dividends.

Take Agricultural Bank as an example: over 220 billion yuan in net profit attributable to the parent and robust growth in the first three quarters of 2025 precisely check all three boxes, making it a cornerstone for long-term insurance capital holdings.

The push from the policy side cannot be ignored either.

Since 2025, regulators have guided large state-owned insurers to allocate 30% of new premiums to A shares. Coupled with the introduction of multi-year assessment mechanisms, this has greatly reduced insurers' concerns over short-term pullbacks.

Currently, equity assets at Ping An Life have risen to 27%, but are still below the regulatory cap, meaning there is still room for increased allocation.

Standing at the beginning of 2026, the frequency and scale of insurance capital stake-building are likely to continue rising.

Until there is a fundamental reversal of the interest rate environment, high-dividend strategies remain insurance capital’s top choice;

However, beyond banks and utilities, as the assessment cycle lengthens, long-term certain sectors such as technology and advanced manufacturing may gradually enter the hunting range of these long-term funds.

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